id3v2 supports many tags used mainly for classical music, that ist i.e. \'composer\', \'conductor\' ecc.
Now, obviously, \'composer\' is a main sorting/searching criterium for classical music... It would be really useful if amarok could support the new sorting tags.
I don\'t know of any programs but iTunes which can do this, amarok could be the next..?

Thanks for all, SW

Indeed, that would be really nice.

Classical music files require information about The composer, the conductor, the orchestra (ensemble), the soloists. It\'s hard to squeeze all of them into the \"Artist\" field. Cataloging software treats such entries as separate \"Artists\". It\'s impossible to list pieces by a selected performer/composer etc. The artist list usually looks like a mess.

I don\'t know any software (neither under Linux nor any \"other\" OS\'es), that fulfills these requirements. ID3v2 specifiaction leaves much room for improvement. Amarok could win hearts of all classical music lovers with these features...

Antheque wrote:

Amarok could win hearts of all classical music lovers with these features...

Indeed. My music collection too is primarily filled with classical music, opera and jazz, and while it seems that a \'per song\' approach to the organization of a collection seems right for pop/rock, this certainly isn\'t a good fit for classical music. Most of my music collection is made up by whole albums encoded to a single file, which I can\'t index correctly because of missing tags, nor can I use cue files in amaroK to index, view and manipulate single tracks of a classical recording.

On the whole, I find that I use amaroK\'s collection feature less and less. My music is well organized on my file system, so I populate the playlist directly from disc. But being able to enhace the indexing of classical music files would make amaroK\'s very nice contextual information much more useful. As would the ability to read and write cue files, to index, search and view individual tracks on recordings encoded to a single file. I would gladly give up some of the ever-popular eye candy, if the indexing and searching functions, as well as the display of contextual info, were more useful for classical music or to organize a serious record collection.

Heh, software development isn\'t like rolling a D&D character. We can\'t take away points from \'eye candy\' and add it to \'additional tag support\'.

We do want to have the ability to add arbitrary tags to songs, like gmail labels or kimdaba. The problem of supporting tags like \'composer\' is what to do with formats that don\'t support it - currently the tags supported by amaroK are common to all formats.

eean wrote:

Heh, software development isn\'t like rolling a D&D character. We can\'t take away points from \'eye candy\' and add it to \'additional tag support\'.

Yeah, right. It\'s not about discounting one \'eye-candy-point\' for one \'raw-functionality-point\'. I too like an application to be visually appealing and useable. But, this being said, it\'s hard not to get the impression that the amaroK community is putting a strong emphasis on glitter and shine; if too strong an emphasis I leave for others to decide. So, where folks politely enquire about CSS options for the playlist in addition to the browsers, my feeling is that I can well live without that sort of sexy features. As far as I am concerned, I am looking for the \'internal values\' to fall in love with a music player and won\'t get enthralled by its make-up.

We do want to have the ability to add arbitrary tags to songs, like gmail labels or kimdaba. The problem of supporting tags like \'composer\' is what to do with formats that don\'t support it - currently the tags supported by amaroK are common to all formats.

I wonder if it would be a good idea to have an option for the user to create arbitrary \'tags\' which would not be stored in the audio file itself, but in the database, just as is done with the collection data. I have a collection of several thousand vinyl records and I am dreaming of a great digital music playing application which I could use at the same time to index and cross-index the physical records and all associated data. Could I custom-design my \'tag\' collection, I could create a great personal music database.

Yes, I agree, most files don\'t have the composer tag set, or don\'t even have a id3v2 tag. But thats the same now too, isn\'t it? Just now, I have 9110 tracks with an empty \'genre\' field. Many files have only id3v2 OR id3v2, all of this no problem for amarok! amarok shows the whole \'artist\' info from id3v2 and not the shortened one of id3v1.
You COULD simply add the possibility to add ANY filter by its 4digit code (like TCOM for track composer), if the field is empty, the result is so too, obviuosly.
If not, enjoy!

I too would be very grateful if support for meaningful classical music metadata were integrated into amaroK. (Supporting the tags proposed in the Ogg Vorbis Comment Field Recommendations would be an excellent first step.)

Quodlibet (gtk) has a very flexible tag handling setup. Add ogg vorbis to that and it can organise a large classical music collection in any way you like: opus, composer, performers, ensembles, conductors, parts, part numbers etc. Suffice to say, in my setup I ignore artist and album altogether. I made a screenshot of how you can organise classical properly:

It is getting annoying, however, to switch between the feature laden amarok and the effective quodlibet when I want to listen to classical music. I would be very interested in helping modify Amarok or quodlibet to cater for classical a little better, finding the time might be another issue. Here is a list of long term improvables for quodlibet I made recently (would equally apply to amarok), and would appreciate suggestions or critisism if people have them.

Note that Amarok may need some serious redesigning to cater for some of these, and thus compromises may need to be made.

Design
[ol]
[*]Make the difference between the piece and the performance clear. Group tags related to the composition and the performance.
[*]Exrta database tables of composers/performers/ensembles/conductors. Include full name, possible versions/translations of name, photo/picture, years and any extra information or links to online information. Perhaps if any users were to add their own information it could be submitted to an online database ala wiki. This can help search where the tag might be \"Handel\", \"G F Handel\", \"George Friedrich Handel\" or \"Georg Friedrich Händel\", and for Russian composers who have various english translations of their names. Plus the added functionality can be used to educate or search based on the date or period of the composers life etc, not to mention being able to find out more about a performer, conductor, ensemble etc. Performers can also have an instrument associated with their name, so that a search for a tenor will give you a list of songs by tenors. Big idea, but very valuable.
[*]A move to the sort of contextual information that Amarok provides for each track would be good and could incorporate the above information.
[*]Global search to automatically include genre, composer, performer, title
[*]Smart search to run an opus search where user has entered the phrase \"op. 23\" or \"BWV 34\", or search by instrument where user has entered a word from an instrument dictionary \"horn, violin, piano, voice\" etc.
[*]encourage extra genres like \"cantata\", \"motet\", \"symphony\", \"sonata\".
[*]Suggest tags after reading the title (\"W.A. Mozart Piano sonata in d-moll KV 452\": INSTRUMENT=piano, GENRE=sonata, KEY=D Minor, OPUS=K. 452, COMPOSER=Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) This can be done using vocabularies (eg Mozart is the composer because his name is in the composer vocabulary)
[/ol]

Display
[ol]
[*] Combining piece information into one long title (title, opus, commontitle, partnumber, part), instead of five separate cells.
[ul][*]Symphonie Nr. 9 d-mol op. 125 \"Choral Symphony\" (IV - Presto)
[*]KlavierSonate Nr. 8 in c-moll op. 13 \"Pathetique Sonata\" (Adagio Cantabile)[/ul]
[*] Combining performance information (performer, ensemble, conductor)
[*]Translation of original titles (Symphonie, Klaviersonate etc) (above examples repeated)
[ul][*]Symphony No. 9 in D minor op. 125 \"Choral Symphony\" (IV - Presto)
[*]Piano Sonata No. 9 in C minor op. 13 \"Pathetique Sonata\" (Adagio Cantabile) [/ul]
[/ol]

Will Hardy wrote:

Encourage extra genres like "cantata", "motet", "symphony", "sonata".

Good idea. I like to categorize my music by a genre (one of chamber, orchestral, vocal, or instrumental) and a subgenre such as string quartet, symphony, sonata.

Combining piece information into one long title (title, opus, commontitle, partnumber, part), instead of five separate cells.

Another good idea that would greatly simply the interface compared to having separate columns for the opus number, part number, etc..

I wonder how much of this can be done without requiring an extension to taglib? I haven\'t looked at its codebase thoroughly, but I don\'t think taglib allows the retrieval or arbitrary tags from a file; I belive its limited to small set of tags appropriate for pop but totally inappropriate for classical music.